NWA world champion Trevor Murdoch recently spoke with Steve Fall from NBC Sports Boston about a wide range of pro-wrestling topics, which included the champ revealing a wild story about fighting a fan in Ireland who was harassing Randy Orton, and what Vince McMahon told him about the incident when he returned to the states. Highlights can be found below.
On the one fan that was bothering them:
“It’s normal routine, at least at that time, at the end of the European tour to go around to the hotel bar and get sloppy drunk until it’s time to get on the airplane and then you pass out on the airplane and you’re home. It’s a 14-hour flight and you sleep 11 of the 14 hours. It’s a short flight. We’re all downstairs at the hotel lobby, it’s the end of the tour, it’s me, Lance (Cade) across from me, Arn Anderson to the right of me and Randy Orton to the left. Randy is the World Champion at the time. What no one knows is, three days before that, he got hurt so bad that he couldn’t even bend over to tie his shoe. They put him in six-man tags to hide him and protect him so no one knew he was injured. We’re all sitting there and talking. A fan comes up to Randy and asks him to sign a piece of paper for him. Randy grabs it, signs it, gives it back, and the guy asks Randy to sign something else. Randy says, ‘Hey man, I’m with my friends, I signed your paper, please leave us alone and let us go about our business.’ This fan turned irate, instant bipolar disorder, I guess. ‘Who the hell are you?’ Starts screaming at Randy. ‘We paid for your tickets. We’re the reason you’re so popular,’ and really being aggressive with him. Randy stands up in his chair and starts looking around for security. He yells to security, ‘This guy is trying to grab my balls, he’s trying to grab my balls. Get him out of here.’ Security runs over, grabs him and takes him out. We go back to talking and having a good time.”
How the fan continued to bother them, ending in him getting smoked:
“About 20 minutes later, this guy comes back again and is nice as can be. He goes up to Randy, ‘Sir, can you please sign this for us?’ Randy was a pressure cooker at the time and we were all taking a deep breath like, ‘this could be bad.’ Randy goes, ‘Please leave me alone. I signed what you needed. I want to have time with my friends. Please leave me alone.’ The fan goes nuts again, yelling and screaming at him. Randy stands up again and screams at security, ‘He grabbed my balls this time. He got in there. Get him out of here.’ They take him out, they swear to us he’s out of the hotel. We go back to having a good time. The bar closes down, we have about two hours before we get on the bus and head to the airport. We’re walking out of the bar and Lance is walking in front of Randy. About ten steps behind Lance is Randy, ten steps behind Randy is me. As we’re walking out of the bar, the guy we thought got thrown out was hiding behind the hotel lobby and is running around. He was going to hit Randy from behind. Randy turned and saw him coming and yelled ‘Murdoch!’ I’m half-crocked, I’m drunk, I was inebriated really bad. I see him coming, turn around, ‘WHAM!’ Just smoke him right in the face.”
Reveals one of the guys he hit belonged to an Irish wedding and a huge brawl was about to break out:
“Another guy comes walking at me, he starts taking his jacket off. He got his jacket around his elbow and that was my shot. ‘WHAM!’ What I didn’t know is that the gentleman bothering Randy all night was part of an Irish wedding reception and they were all down in the lobby. After I punch the second guy, I find myself in a half-moon of about 25 Irishmen taking their jackets off and they were ready to kick my ass. About that time, Lance had turned around and realized we weren’t behind him. He sees I’m in a pickle and he turns into a 290-pound bulldozer and he starts running. These poor bastards never see him coming because they have their backs to him. He lowered his head, knocked about four guys onto their bellies, picked me up and grabbed me through the hole. I swear it was like a movie. We’re running through the elevator and as the elevator doors are closing, they’re running too. Lance and I sit back and take a deep breath. Like idiots, we had been drinking, we thought it was done.”
How the security guard got involved and a bunch of them were nearly arrested:
“About 30 minutes later, we’re in our hotel room, talking about the chain of events, getting our stuff together and my phone rings. ‘That’s never good.’ I pick up the phone and it’s Arn Anderson. He goes, ‘Trevor.’ I, like an idiot, tried to pretend I was sleeping. ‘What’s going on Arn?’ ‘You got that knucklehead Lance Cade with you?’ I knew the jig was up. ‘Yes sir.’ ‘You motherfuckers get down here, you’re getting arrested.’ I go downstairs, the police are down there, they have three paddy wagons for us. What we don’t know is that the security guard that was supposed to be watching us, was talking to a female, and should have prevented all of this. He saw the first guy who got punched getting up, and he got up on all fours and the security guard took a ten-step punt and punted this guy in the face, knocks him clean out. The problem for them was that the security guard was black and there are still racial issues in Ireland. When they see him do that, they got really aggressive with him, threw him into the paddy wagon, and he had been sitting there the whole time while they were waiting for us.”
What Vince McMahon told them following the incident:
“We were World Tag Team Champions at the time. We flew back thinking we were about to get fired. We’re World Tag Team Champions, we had just been arrested in a foreign country, we lost our jobs. Once Vince hears about this, we’re done. We go to Raw the next day and we’re waiting for somebody to talk to us and give us the ax. We’re like, ‘If they fire us for this, we’re taking the tag belts home. They’re going to have to come to our house and get them. This is horseshit. We were looking out for the champ.’ If the guy would have hit Randy from behind, and he’s already hurt, there are cell phones. All it would have taken was a couple of people [snapping pictures], the world champion is down by some stranger. It wouldn’t have been good for business. We end up getting aggravated because nobody was talking to us. We tracked Vince down. ‘Vince, we have to talk to you.’ We laid it all out to him. ‘This is what happened, this is why we did what we did, these were the repercussions.’ He sat there for what felt like an eternity, but probably 15-20 seconds. He goes, ‘You know what boys, it’s good for the fans to get their asses kicked every once in a while [laughs]. Don’t worry about it, I’ll have the lawyers take care of it.’ We walked away, Lance and I looked at each other, ‘What just happened?’ We went from preparing ourselves to talk to our wives about not having a job to ‘it’s good for the fans to get their asses kicked.'”
(H/T and transcribed by Fightful)
